Wednesday

Nov 7, 2018 at 4:51 PMNov 7, 2018 at 5:15 PM

DAVIE — His arm hurts on every throw and, if he returns, he’ll play through some degree of pain the rest of the season. His arm strength is inconsistent. And it’s unclear whether the injury is healing.

That’s where things stand for the Dolphins and starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill. The goal — he and coach Adam Gase stressed the word goal — is that he’ll be back for the Nov. 25 game at Indianapolis.

“I’ll use these next two weeks to get healthy and get back into throwing and get sharp and be ready to go,” Tannehill said. “Obviously, that’s not set in stone. We have to see what happens. But that’s my goal. I’m all-in on doing everything I can to be ready for Indy.”

Backup quarterback Brock Osweiler will make his fifth consecutive start when the Dolphins visit Green Bay on Sunday. They have a bye week after that, and if Tannehill makes it back to face the Colts, he will have been shelved a total of six weeks since missing the Oct. 14 game against Chicago with a capsule injury in his right shoulder.

Tannehill currently isn’t throwing. When he was ruled out shortly before Miami hosted the Bears, the team shut him down for 10 days. When he tried to begin a throwing program at that point, it was clear his shoulder hadn’t healed much. The Dolphins put him on a rest plan again and are continuing to hold him back from throwing this week.

After the Green Bay game, Tannehill will try to start the throwing program again. The first step is 40 throws at 10 yards.

Every throw hurts, without exceptions.

“Oh yeah,” Tannehill said definitively.

Of all the criticisms of Tannehill, he’s never been accused of lacking toughness. He started 77 straight games to open his career despite getting sacked 213 times and had never missed time other than when he suffered a season-ending knee injury late in 2016 and tore his ACL in the ensuing preseason to miss all of last year.

“If it was just pain, I could deal with that,” he said. “I could go out and do it. Being able to do the job is the issue... It’s not just pushing through pain. It’s physically being able to get the ball where it needs to go.”

Gase has said the passes look good to him, but he knows it’s painful for Tannehill. The fear is that he’ll try to make a throw in a game and won’t be able to fire it with his normal velocity and accuracy.

Tannehill maintained he’s fully confident he’ll play again this season, echoing what Gase has said since the onset, and multiple doctors have told him he doesn’t need surgery to repair his shoulder.

That’s positive for Tannehill’s future, but in the short-term there’s concern about whether he’s making any progress. Gase wasn’t sure if his shoulder has improved since the Bears game.

“It’s hard for me to say, because I think he’s tired of me asking him,” he said. “I quit asking him. I just know they’ll come to me if they feel like they’ve had a big improvement or if he feels a lot better. They’ll tell me. I think he’s over me asking him how he feels.”

When Tannehill was asked if it’s any better, he replied, “It’s gotta be. It was a little better when I went to throw again. It just wasn’t close to where it needs to be to do the job and make the throws I need to make.”

Like most people, Tannehill said he’d never heard of a capsule injury prior to this. Injuries to the capsular tissue around the shoulder can place additional stress on the rotator cuff in addition to the pain he’s feeling and the hindrance to his arm strength.

The Dolphins believe he got hurt in the Oct. 7 game at Cincinnati when he scrambled and tried to throw, but Bengals defensive end Carlos Dunlap hit his arm as he tried to release the ball.

If he’s not 100 percent when he returns, Tannehill has been told a similar incident could further damage his shoulder, but anything should of that would merely be an issue of pain tolerance.

When he practiced three days after the Cincinnati game, his shoulder hurt but he believed he could push through it. It got “drastically” worse the next day and he was unable to finish practice the Friday before facing the Bears.

He has been practicing the last few weeks, but usually does so without throwing. He will drop back and bounce in the pocket while the receivers run their routes, eschewing even a pantomimed throw. Any time he raises his arm, it hurts.

“It’s uncomfortable in overhead situations,” he said. “But walking around — That’s kinda the screwy part. If I played another position, I’d be able to play. You’d be able to do it. It’s that the motion of throwing stresses the part that I injured. Unfortunately, I need it to be strong and withstand the force of going through the motion to do my job.”

The Dolphins were 3-2 when Tannehill went down, and he had eight touchdowns, five interceptions and a 92.9 passer rating. They’ve gone 2-2 with Osweiler, who has six touchdowns, three picks and a 91.1 rating.

jason_lieser@pbpost.com

@JasonLieser

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